Susan Bernofsky

Acclaimed translator and author Susan Bernofsky, Chair of the PEN Translation Committee, teaches literary translation at the Columbia University School of the Arts,where she directs Literary Translation at Columbia. She has translated twenty books, including seven by the great Swiss-German modernist writer Robert Walser, as well as novels by Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Hermann Hesse, Gregor von Rezzori, and others. She received the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize and the 2012 Calwer Hermann-Hesse Prize as well as awards and fellowships from the NEH, the NEA, the PEN Translation Fund, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation. A 2012–13 fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center, she blogs about translation at Translationista.

Susan Bernofsky's work

About Words Without Borders

Words Without Borders opens doors to international exchange through translation, publication, and promotion of the best international literature. Every month we publish select prose and poetry on our site. In addition we develop print anthologies, work with educators to bring literature in translation into classrooms, host events with foreign authors, and maintain an extensive archive of global writing.read more »